Highlight of OMMA Global day one for me was Terence Kawaja of GCA Savvian, whose presentation included a verse by verse playing and discussion of his own satirical song “Mad Avenue Blues” (sung to the tune of “American Pie,” with the refrain changed to “The Year the Media Died”). Like the original, it’s long (9:21 | View post »

How to Be Useful (Photo by Robert Banh, cc-by license) I used to be fond of saying that the best advice for content-centric businesses on the web was a simple commandment: Above all, be interesting – everything else will follow from that Being interesting is still necessary, of course – if you’re trying to create | View post »

Earlier this summer, the Altimeter Group and WetPaint collaborated to produce the ENGAGEMENTdb site and related ENGAGEMENTdb Report ( a free download). It’s truly a must-read if you’re interested in how large brands are engaging their customers through social media. In the Introduction, Ben Elowitz (of WetPaint) and Charlene Li (of Altimeter) claim: While much | View post »

Thought I’d share a quick embedded presentation here for folks who aren’t yet following me on SlideShare. (Although after performing tag-team PowerPoint Karaoke at PodCamp Boston, perhaps I should think twice?). Assembled Web And Social Media View more presentations from John Eckman. The goal of the presentation- a sanitized (client references removed) version of one | View post »

(Quick Update 10/11/09 – see Zachary Seeward’s post about how the Knight Foundation is considering changing the terms of grants in the future, as well as Patrick Thornton’s piece on how the Foundation is assembling a team to continue working on the code base produced by the Everyblock team). The John S. and James L. | View post »

Given all the raging debate about paid media online – whether users (or consumers, if you prefer) will pay for access to content, whether paywalls and micropayments have a place, and the like – it’s refreshing to see an independent podcaster demonstrating the value of well curated content and the willingness of folks to pay | View post »

I don’t normally blog much about twitter: it seems like an already over-covered by other voices. Lately, though, I’ve been seeing an increase in twittering of dubious value. For example, automatically following (or stalking, as Ari Herzog put it) folks who mention a given term, and overly friendly twitter accounts purporting to be young women | View post »

In this video, Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired and the author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, presents during a Berkman Center Luncheon on some of the key issues around the concept, including: What motivates the contributors in crowdsourced efforts? Specifically, to what extent are | View post »